Speechless: Keep punching up

A while back, I wrote a post about disabled siblings in fiction, and the way they are so often dehumanised, used as macguffins and turned into inspiration porn. People with disabilities are not ofter allowed, in fiction, to be the protagonist in their own lives, and if they are, their story is more often than not entirely about their disability. Many of the LGBQ people I know hate that so often stories about people who are on that spectrum fall into either the 'coming out to self' or 'coming out to the world' category - there are more interesting things going on in queer people's lives than coming out! Likewise, trans and nonbinary acquaintances hate that the only storylines available to trans people in fiction are often 'person realises they are trans' or 'trans person is outed, dies'. People are affected by their marginalisation, yes, but they are not in entirety defined by it. We all have more complexity than our identities, but media is in many cases still catching up to that fact.

I do not mean to say that there is no merit in a coming out story or a first love story. There can be a great deal of meaning, particularly, I find, in YA fiction where children and young people see those who look like themselves and are thrilled to be acknowledged. But let us not pretend that gay life is all coming out, first love and the deaths of our lovers. Let us not pretend that trans life is all violence, black life all racism or disabled life all being treated like a prop to further our siblings' stories.

All this to say, I'm rather enjoying ABC's new show Speechless, a story about how disability and the attitudes to it from those who should know better, affects a whole family. It's a pretty standard setup for a sitcom: two parents, still married, three children, one brainy, one sporty and one with cerebral palsy which means he uses a wheelchair full time and uses assistive technology to communicate and express himself. You see how instantly, the kid with a disability is entirely defined by his disability? So easy to do.

And yet. The character of JJ, played by the talented and charismatic Micah Fowler, who himself has CP, is way more than his disability, even in the pilot. Smart, funny and silly, JJ is presented as a very normal teenage boy, with a subversive sense of humour and a screw-you attitude to authority. The fact that he struggles to articulate his fingers separately doesn't stop him flipping the bird to some oglers in a car park; when assigned an aide to speak for him, interpreting from his technology to give him a voice, he decides that she sounds like a fairy godmother and delights in making her say things about pumpkins and 'bibbidy bobbidy boo'. I've worked a lot with young people, and JJ is presented as a very typical teenage boy, in a way that is utterly delightful.

Not only that, he is flawed. Like many (dare I say most?) teenagers, he is at times deceitful, rude, and a bit of an asshole. He uses other people's perceptions of him against them for his own gain. He says things which are deliberately hurtful when lashing out. His sense of humour is not victimless. He objectifies cheerleaders in a very teenage way. He's charming, but not always nice. Which I find particularly refreshing. JJ is not inspiration porn, and the show acknowledges this in the first episode. His new class try to nominate him as class president, citing that he's 'so inspirational!' Bemused, he says, 'Why? You don't know me.' The joke is on the short-sighted teacher and class, and is not made at the expense of people with disabilities.

JJ's mother, Maya, played superbly by Minnie Driver, is likewise a hoot. Determined to get everything JJ should be entitled to, she goes to bat for him with a vengeance, pulling him and his siblings out of school and into new districts when she feels it will be possible to get better provision for her son. Quickly frustrated by school administration, she rails against the barriers and hurdles JJ encounters. Maya is shown to be quick to judge, melodramatic and fiercely loving and protective of her children, particularly JJ. One of the themes which seems set to emerge is the way that JJ, at 16, is ready to begin enjoying some independence from his, at times, overbearing mother, and how difficult it is likely to be for her to allow this. Although Maya is a character played for laughs, the show never seems to shy away from the fact that what she is doing is from a place of love and is the right thing to do for her child. The show is not laughing at parents of kids with special needs, but with them. It's punching up, not down, as the best comedy does, and it manages to do it without being preachy.

I do have some concerns about the show, but so far they are fairly mild. One is that the viewpoint character, if one had to be chosen, is Ray, JJ's brother. We see life from the perspectives of all of the family members, but more Ray than the others. I am anxious that the show avoid falling into the trap of 'disabled sibling exists to make abled sibling's life harder'. I hope this show will do that, and one of the ways it can will be by placing the whole family front and centre, not just Ray.

Another is Kenneth, JJ's new aide. Lampshaded as 'the black guy' in the town - yes, this show is spectacularly white - he is shown to be cool, laid back, easy going, caring, gentle and strong. All good attributes, and particularly important in bringing to the forefront the gentle side of black masculinity and caring. As long as Kenneth avoids being written as a stereotype, the show will do ok, but it would be preferable to me if the cast was more diverse. I love the barriers they're breaking by having this gentle, caring guy - but did the one named black guy in the show have to start off as a janitor? Break a stereotype, make a stereotype. The other one lacks a name, and is a cop.

I write this having seen the first two episodes, and I'll keep watching with interest. I really hope this show turns out well. It seems to be written by careful people who are aware of the harmful tropes that they could inadvertently perpetrate, and I hope that that remains the case. At least we can be pretty sure that in this realistic series, there will be no miracle cures. Thank goodness.

An Exotic Holiday

Anastasia Socks

During the summer, Mr Handmade and I did something we've long talked about and never actually done: we rented a holiday cottage with some friends and did a proper grown-up holiday with some of our favourite people.

We chose a small town on the edge of the yorkshire dales, with the promise of a little walking, a little shopping and some days out to encourage us. We found a cottage and took it for a week in July, just before most of the schools went on summer holiday.

When the time came, we crammed four adults and all of the bags and baggages we thought we'd need or want for a week away into my tiny purple car, and set off. Driving a heavily laden car around some relatively steep inclines was... interesting, but we arrived, got fish and chips from the local chip shop, and settled in.

The holiday was lovely - very restorative - and included a little of all the things we enjoy. Mr Handmade and I sneaked off on our own and wandered around Acorn Bank, a national trust property with excellent gardens and a house in the early stages of renovation and setting up. We had lunch at a chocolate factory in Orton and bought fresh bread from the town bakery each day. We played most of the board games we took with us. And I took one of the friends and the car and we went to a yarn shop and visited Farfield Mill.

Farfield Mill was... interesting. It was mostly given over to shopping, with artists having individual little divided spaces and selling various things. I think my mother-out-law would love it, but I'm not sure that we are the target market yet. Downstairs, it has some great displays and a pretty good presentation on the 'Terrible Knitters of Dent', who knit in a sort of whole-torso rocking motion and were apparently very fast. I'm quite sad that their sort of knitting - known as swaving - has died out, but there are not very many accounts of it, and no video evidence that might enable us to recreate how they did it. I am aware that a certain blogger claims he has worked it out, but I have watched his videos and he is wrong. What he is doing is knitting, cottage style, with bent needles, not swaving.

We enjoyed Williams' Wools, a lovely shop where the owner was very happy to let us browse at length. I bought some West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 ply in the Kingfisher colourway, which knit up very rapidly indeed into some socks which were claimed by my grandmother. Overall, the holiday was a distinct success, and one we plan to repeat in future. Holidaying with friends is very different to going with family or just as a couple, and we liked it a lot.

Recipe: Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Cookies

I've been making variations on these cookies for years, having initially adapted the recipe from the Good Housekeeping recipe book my mum's had since before I was born. I've never actually made them to the recipe in the book, and just keep fiddling and messing until I find something I like.

Having slightly hurt my left wrist doing too much deadline knitting, I'm cutting down on the knitting for a couple of days. My big project is done, and my next knitting deadline isn't until December. I don't mean by that what you think - I'm not planning to knit gifts for people this year as I have other plans. My best friend is anticipating a new family member, so I'm using this as an excuse to make all the cute baby clothes and accessories I've had my eye on for ages.

Being fat, I'm careful about knitting baby things in public. I have a sock on the go for that, to avoid the embarrassment of the conversation which goes like this:
Stranger: "Aww, when are you due?"
Me: "Not pregnant, just fat."
Stranger, embarrassed, wanders away

Anyway, baking uses different muscles to knitting, and I was itching for a creative outlet this morning. Baking cookies is a great way to start the weekend. These are particularly excellent about 10 minutes out of the oven, when they're still warm and a bit chewy inside. When they cool, they have excellent snap and a slightly complex sweetness, not too cloying.

A note on measurements: All ingredients are by weight and in imperial measurements. Although I am what's called a 'millenial' and learned metric in school, I was taught to bake by my mother and grandparents, who taught me in imperial, and so that is how I bake. Sorry.

Makes12 good size cookies.

Ingredients:
3oz butter or margarine, softened slightly
3oz white sugar
3oz light brown sugar
1 egg
6oz self raising flour
2oz white chocolate chips
2oz smooth peanut butter
vanilla extract or chef's vanilla

Method:
Preheat oven to gas mark 4 or 180°c.

Cream together the butter with both sugars until smooth in consistency and light in colour.

Add the egg and a splash of vanilla extract (not too much - 1/4 teaspoon is enough) and mix until just combined.

Add the flour and chocolate chips and stir in gently. When most of the flour is incorporated, add the peanut butter and stir until mixture is even and no floury or excessively peanut-buttery areas remain. Make sure you scrape around the bowl to incorporate everything.

On a lined baking sheet, place 1tbsp sized dollops of mixture spaced well apart to allow for spreading. Bake for 12 minutes at 180°c and then check on them - they should be well risen and lightly browned at the edges. I find that the first batch tend to need 2 minutes longer, but for subsequent batches 12 minutes is enough.

Leave to cool on the baking tray until the cookies have sunk, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack or paper-towel-lined plate to cool the rest of the way, or eat warm with tea, coffee or glasses of cold milk.

Angelfall, or the problem with disabled younger siblings in fiction

You know how sometimes, there'll be a book that you pick up and put back again each time you go to the bookshop? One that draws you in but you can't quite make the commitment to buy and read? For a little while, that book for me was Angelfall, by Susan Ee. It looked cool - I liked the idea of the post-apocalyptic, angel-ravaged landscape, and the cover is pretty awesome. I also enjoyed the fact that it had a young woman as its main character and there wasn't any mention of a love triangle in the blurb. I picked it up, put it back, picked it up again, each time I went to the bookshop. Eventually, I bought it in ebook form, and read it that way.

Perhaps this pick-it-up-put-it-back cycle hyped it up too much for me, but I was kind of disappointed. Not in the plot, so much, or the world building, which I enjoyed a lot. Mostly I was disappointed by the way that disability was discussed in the book, both in terms of physical disability and mental illness, which I found pretty ignorant and kind of gross. (spoilers follow for the entirety of Angelfall)

The main character, Penryn, is the teenage daughter of a schizophrenic mother. The mother is constantly described as scary, dangerous, unhinged, unable to properly love her children. Certainly she is presented as unable to take care of her children, leading to Penryn having to effectively mother her younger sister. There is very little mention of a father - I don't remember it ever being clear where he was or why he was unable to help to raise his daughters. The mother is presented as having brief, rare moments of clarity where she is horrified at what she's capable of and does things like sign up Penryn to every martial arts class she can locate and pay in advance for the following couple of years. Then she's back to being scary, dangerous and talking to demons. My problem with this character is that she remains a distant stereotype, never becoming a real character. She is entirely defined by the fact that she is violent, scary, unpredictable, and ultimately a danger to everyone around her, including her children.

One of the results of their mother's mental illness is that, prior to the events of the book occurring, Penryn's little sister was gravely injured by their mother when nobody else was around to see it. This injury - which I infer to be a spinal injury of some description, though it's not stated explicitly - left Paige unable to use her legs, or, as Ee puts it "wheelchair bound". The wheelchair users I know really dislike that phrase - they're not trapped in their chairs, the chair gives them freedom to get about and do stuff. Ee also refers to Paige as having "lost her legs", although it's clear from the end of the book that Paige is not an amputee. I found this a strange and lazy way to say that she had lost the use of her legs.

Paige is kidnapped within the first five per cent of the book, and doesn't show up again until the very end. Rescuing Paige is the primary driving force of the novel, with Penryn as narrator making clear that everything she does is for her sister. The girls' mother cannot be trusted to find her young daughter, because she's too busy being scary and crazy, so Penryn, a teenager, has to find and rescue her younger sister. Paige is there only to motivate Penryn, basically a macguffin to drive the plot. Like their mother, she never evolves past her stereotype, which is inspirational disabled angelic victim. Paige is sweet, loving, beautiful and perfect, apart from the fact that she's a victim of their crazy scary mother. She's the infant version of Cousin Helen from What Katy Did, a woman with disabilities who is literally referred to as a saint.

There was one particularly troubling passage about Paige and how she was before the world ended. Penryn briefly describes her sister's friends - a kid with significant limb difference, a kid who drools, a kid who has a breathing pump - and then describes Paige: "Paige was their cheerleader, counsellor and best friend all rolled into one." I read this as presenting Paige through juxtaposing the difference between her and her friends - sorry, her 'flock'. Paige is clearly presented as the leader of this little group, more charismatic, smarter, more positive and optimistic than the other children. The way that the other kids' disabilities are described is in such a way that we, the reader, are supposed to understand the revulsion that people feel upon looking at Paige's 'flock'. By this contrast, we infer, Paige is much better. Less gross. She doesn't drool. She looks the most 'normal'. Of course this makes her the 'cheerleader' of the group, a role in American fiction that is intrinsically linked with beauty, attraction, charisma, popularity and success. The other disabled kids were invoked only to show us more about how perfect Paige is.

I think the main reason that Ee spent so much energy setting up how perfect/beautiful/saintly Paige is, is so that we would feel more of the wrench for Penryn when Paige reappears at the end of the book, transformed into a monster. Her spine has been operated on by the angels, returning her ability to walk, and somehow she has been given super strength, but her (previously perfect, angelic) face has been cut open to replace her teeth with vicious fangs, which also leave her unable to talk. I can see that, if we buy in to the depiction of Paige as this perfect child, her transformation into atrocity is deeply emotionally affecting. However, by the time this was revealed, I was already tired of the trope-y nature of the characters in the book, and ready for it to end.

One thing I probably should mention is that this novel is written in first person, narrated by Penryn. I suppose it could be argued that a teenager who hates her mother and adores her sister will not present them as anything more than the stereotypes as which they appear in this book. But I find it problematic and irresponsible that Ee didn't do more to depict these characters in a more three-dimensional way. Penryn is shown to be able to think in a complex way about other issues, but in terms of thinking about disability, it's the same old stuff.

Disabled characters in books seem almost always to be either saints or burdens, and almost never the main character in their own right. Penryn has both a burden and a saint to bear, in the form of her mother and sister, but the tropes around disability that Ee employed read to me as both lazy and ignorant. The disabled characters of Angelfall never get to be anything other than the stereotypes that are initially employed to describe them - the same tired, lazy tropes that we see everywhere. As described in this brilliant essay, the disabled characters of this novel exist purely to add difficulty, pathos and motivation to the life of the main character, an abled young woman.

This book is partly so disappointing because I wanted it to be better. I liked that the main character could generally take care of herself. I enjoyed the world building. The prose was pretty decent. That's what makes it such a shame that the characterisation let it down.

The Fifth Season, by NK Jemisin

Reading a book is an act of trust. I've frequently been heard to say, 'Life's too short to read bad books,' and it's something I wholeheartedly believe. If I start reading a book and find that it's not to my taste, I'm doing nobody any favours by continuing to read it. Carrying on with a book is, to me, saying that I trust that the book will be worth my time. If I'm not enjoying it, the author has not inspired that trust in me, and I'll give up. I've encountered many people who finish every book they start, on principle. I'm the opposite.

Finding an author I can reliably trust to deliver work I'll enjoy and want to read to the end is amazing - like meeting someone and knowing they're destined to become an old friend. As a child, Diana Wynne Jones was one of these authors; I would take any of her books out of the library without even glancing at the blurb, because I knew I would love it, whatever she wrote. The same was true of Joan Aiken. I read everything of hers that I could get my hands on and loved it all - this was begun with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, which I was given for my sixth birthday by my former childminder.

A little over four years ago, I discovered a new author of the trustworthy kind: N K Jemisin. I'll buy anything she writes. I've loved all of her novels so far, and all of her short stories that I've read. I've given copies of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms as gifts to friends and family at least half a dozen times. During my first Masters degree, I wrote a paper on her first published novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (it was about the fluidity of Nahadoth's gender and Heidegger's 'gift' and Da-sein), which means my paperback copy of the book is frilled with placemarkers and post-it notes with all my scribblings on them. When I wrote this essay, I emailed her letting her know that I had enjoyed her work and she emailed back so graciously that it really just cemented my enjoyment of her work. Not only is she a hell of a writer, she's either a really great person, or exceptionally good at pretending to be (I suspect the former).

I don't recall how long ago I preordered The Fifth Season - months, at least. I read about it on her blog when she was writing about curse words and the way they betray the values of a society, when it was still being called the Untitled Magic Seismology Project (UMSP) and I've been waiting for it with growing excitement since then. That was in 2012. So, three years? Ish?

Anyway, The Fifth Season was released this week, and it is amazing. I trust Jemisin to write stuff that I'll want to read, and will buy pretty much anything with her name on it. But this is her best novel yet. Even before I had finished it, I was enthusing to friends and theorizing and realising links and connections between characters and situations and it's just a triumph. It's amazing. I love it.

The Fifth Season is about three women - one child, leaving her family to be taken and trained to use her orogenic powers (magic based on and involving the earth and seismic effects); one young woman in control of her powers who has been sent away with a man she can barely stand, to do a job she doesn't want to do, and is expected to return pregnant if possible; and a woman fully grown into herself and her powers, facing the loss and death of her children. I was more than halfway through the book before I realised that it's the maiden, the mother and the crone, but of course all of these characters are more than that.

This book is about oppression and love and protection and identity and power and fear. It's about parenthood and childhood, family and strangeness. There are characters who are queer and poly and trans; there are characters who are hated and feared because of what they are and punished for what they cannot help but be; there are characters with black skin, brown skin, white skin, with straight and curly and kinky hair, with and without epicanthal folds. The world that she has built looks, in many ways, different from our own, but the diversity of experiences and people is there. And it's there because Jemisin has made it matter that it is there. She does this on purpose (I assume that everything in her books is there on purpose, because Jemisin is a very purposeful and thoughtful writer.) and it makes all the difference. It matters that there exist books where the main characters are bisexual and polyamorous, where there are prominent trans characters and gender fluid characters, where characters have disabilities of various types. Jemisin writes about oppression in various forms in all of her books, and she writes about it from the point of view of a person who notices things and thinks about them. There is no 'writing about the default' in her work. It is a thousand miles away from medieval-Europe-white-people-sword-and-sorcery, and so much the better for it.

It's impossible to express how much I loved this book. I'm composing a list of people who deserve or need to get this book for birthdays or solstice and currently the list stands at 'everyone.' I'm looking forward to buying it in dead tree version so I can reread it and still have a new experience with it. If and when the audiobook becomes available in the UK, I'll buy it and listen to it. I think it will become my favourite book by my favourite living author. It's amazing. I loved it. I loved it.

Women are not things: Mad Max's "Feminist Propaganda"

Last weekend Mr Handmade and I went to see Mad Max: Fury Roads.

I haven't seen the first three in the franchise. I don't know how I've missed them; I think my Dad even has them in a DVD box set in their living room, but I've never (to my knowledge) seen any of them. I'm aware of the general idea (cars in a wasteland, and Mel Gibson being a silly action hero). Fine.

So we went and watched the newest one. You can probably guess whose pick it was; moreso when I say that I went in with little knowledge and no expectations. Cars, wasteland, some actors whose names I recognised, and he wanted to watch it, so okay. We saw it in 2D (we both hate 3D movies).

It wasn't until after we came out that he told me that it had been making MRAs (Men's Rights Activists, aka whiny anti-feminist types) angry. Had he told me that before we decided, I would have been much more excited to see it.

The premise of the film is pretty simple (spoilers ahead):

Max is captured by a society of white-painted 'War boys', led by their scary-faced repulsive leader who keeps a throng of people in thrall to him by limiting their access to water. Then Imperator Furiosa, the driver of their largest, most impressive vehicle (a tanker with half a VW Beetle welded to the top of it) rescues their leader's "wives" to take them away to a semi-mythical 'green place' where she grew up before she was kidnapped by the war boys as a child. One hell of a car chase ensues.

This film was not unproblematic. One of the biggest issues was the way that the main antagonists were so deathly pale - falling into the Evil Albino stereotype. I found it slightly unclear whether we were expected to infer that the warboys had their complexion due to painting themselves white, or whether they were meant to be that pale naturally, but the fact that it didn't wear off through the film in the way that the body paint of other characters did suggests to me that we are to infer that their pallor is natural.

There were also certainly moments of male gaze - shots of supermodels wearing nothing but gauze bikinis. The wives in general weren't particularly well fleshed-out, although they were shown to be intelligent people with their own wants and needs. I'm not sure that the characterisation they got made up for the slightly gratuitous semi-nudity.

On the other hand, this film defied Hollywood convention in many ways that I enjoyed. There was no romance, for one thing. The main characters were just that - characters. There was no love interest. No woman reduced to a hero's sexual plaything. All of the women were there on their own merits.

In fact, the men who did use women sexually against their will were demonstrated clearly to be evil men, symbols and products of an evil society. The good men were those who appreciated and respected women under their own merits - which is painfully rare in current film, particularly film of this genre.

However, what I loved most about this film was the character of Furiosa. A woman with a visible disability (left arm amputee) that's never used to denigrate her, who defies the will of her boss and takes control of a situation that nobody would want to be in. A butch woman whose femininity is not threatened. A woman who is brave, tough, strong, kind and loving. A woman shown to be capable of using many weapons, both physical (fists, elbows, knives, guns) and mental (logic, persuasion), and deciding according to the situation which is the best to use. A woman shown, in short, to be capable of many things. I think it's mostly Furiosa that has the MRAs decrying this film as feminist propaganda. As one parody puts it, she 'doesn't even show us her tits'. Furiosa is beautiful (played by Charlize Theron, of course she is) but not defined by it. Rather, she is defined by her formidable ability to survive in the harsh world in which they live.

After reading in many places that this self-consciously silly action film was being seen as 'feminist propaganda', I began to think about precisely which messages it was that these men had taken issue with. Propaganda is, by definition, misleading.

Was it the part of the film where a woman was shown to be able to throw a punch that knocked a man to the floor? The part where a woman could shoot as well as anyone else?

Was it the idea that a woman could be logical? Know how to fix or modify a car?

Or was it simply the message made explicit early in the film upon the women's escape from their captor? Perhaps the most chilling interpretation of these men's ire is that what may be the central message of the film is seen by these men as misleading, biased or in some other way 'wrong'. It's writ large across the film, painted onto walls and said by sympathetic characters many times: Women are not things.

A mishmash

Karina has written some interesting thoughts on knitting/crafting and lifestyle blogs and curation of personal 'brand' and image. She refers to it as 'Gooping', as in Paltrow. I think that a certain amount of curation is not only advisable, but necessary. We don't need to know gnarly inside details of everything and everyone's life. On the other hand, allowing some 'mess' to creep in is needed.

There can, I think, be a temptation to avoid admitting when things are hard, to keep things light and bright and sparkling. Those blogging about knitting and quilting rarely blog about their mental health issues or the homophobia they face in the street or being victims of any number of crimes and microaggressions daily. It seems almost compartmentalised away from that, as though creating a creative space requires no allowance of negativity.

For me, when I have brainweasels, it's hard for me to create. I can tell I'm depressed when I have no interest in knitting or sewing or spinning. I only really do these things when I'm happy - maybe that's linked to it. But I certainly identify with what Karie says about the mint/peach blob. The lives of most of these people don't really resemble mine in any meaningful way.

***

I'm looking for audiobook recommendations. I've recently listened to and enjoyed Tell the Wolves I'm Home and I've just read The Rabbit Back Literature Society which was quite good and Alif the Unseen which was wonderful. Heard anything great lately?

***

I listen to this poem sometimes just on repeat. I think it's one of my favourites.

Have a good Monday.

A Special Gift

In knitting circles, there is semi-regular discussion of 'knitworthiness'. Someone who is not knitworthy will accept your handmade gift and then set it immediately aside, sneer at it, refuse to ever wear it or fail to follow care instructions, so that when the knitter later asks (yes, yes, much safer never to ask after a gift...) the recipient says 'oh, I washed it on hot and it shrank so I gave it away/cut it up/gave it to the dog...'

The general consensus is that knitworthy people are to be cherished and protected at all costs. They are worthy of the hours of work, the silks and cashmeres and handpainted yarns. My nanna is knitworthy - she got a shawl that I made for her in Wollmeise. The supervisor for my undergraduate dissertation is the most knitworthy non-knitter I've ever met; I made her a fichu and a pair of fingerless gloves and gave her a shawl during the time she was teaching and supervising me, and each time she admired the item in detail, from the pattern to the colour to the texture, and each time I saw her using the item around campus. That's how you get more handknits from a knitter! I would knit for her again like a shot. I don't know if she knows knitters or if she's just naturally gracious and knitworthy, but she is the very model for gift receiving. 

Of course, even close family have to prove their knitworthiness. I've known more than one knitter who will knit cheerfully for friends and acquaintances but refuses to knit so much as a cotton washcloth for their sister/aunt/mother who has demonstrated their unworthiness of such an honour.

I haven't seen a similar idea in quilting circles, or maybe I'm just not a reader of enough quilting message boards. But there is certainly one person in my life who is very worthy as a recipient of handmades, and that's my fiance, Mr Handmade. 

His quilt has been on the go for a while now, but he has never nagged about it. When I finally got myself into gear and finished it off, he was thrilled. He snuggled under it immediately I gave it to him; he put it on the bed so it would be close and warm and useful straight away; he laid it out and told me which blocks were his favourites ("All of them! Especially this one... and this one... and this one...") and he told me over and over how soft and lovely it is, how much he loves it, how talented he thinks I am for making it.

Oh, my lovely, knitworthy, quiltworthy love. I will make him all the quilts he asks for. He's proved he's worthy of them.

A(n almost) finished object!

Please excuse the artifical light in this picture - I just wanted a record of how I spent my Sunday, working on this UFO.

I started this morning with a pieced top and the fleece backing ready to go - and it had been like that for over a month - and hoped to get up the energy to baste it by the end of the day. About lunchtime I swept the floor, spread everything out and started the long and arduous task of crawling around with safety pins. I can definitely see why so many quilters use those gadgets to close safety pins - it'll be days before my fingertips recover.

I had some clear ideas about how I wanted to quilt it, but only partial ideas. First things first, I quilted in the ditch between each block, and then looked at it to assess how much more quilting it needed. I wanted it to be a soft, snuggly quilt, so not too much quilting was in order, but it definitely needed more quilting than just a 12" grid. My issue was mainly how to quilt it with all the squares being so different to each other, and give it a sense of unity within the quilting.

I began with the ones with a clear square in the centre - the middle two, the churn dash above them, the star from 'made' fabric, and so on. I quilted around that square. Then I looked for similarly sized shapes in the others, and quilted square or square-ish shapes in those. In the house  block, for instance, I quilted around the shape of the house. I quilted around the central square of the pinwheels block and the inside octagon of the bowties block. The four squares that meet in the middle of the nine-patch block were treated as one square in the quilting. For the string block, I found a place where three of the quadrants had seams that met, and quilted that diamond, even though it meant going down the middle of the strip on the other quadrant. Finally, for the 'breaking out' block, I quilted a square set on point around that central pinwheel.

I bound it using seven fabrics that are either represented in the quilt or from the same collections. I didn't want to hand sew the binding to the back because of the fleece backing, so I consulted this tutorial from Cluck Cluck Sew and machined it. All that remains is to bury all of my threads, and the quilt is completed. Not too shabby for one afternoon's work.

This is deeply imperfect. There are so many seams that don't match up, I was astonished when I found any that did! There are fabric choices and colour choices that I would definitely not make if I was making the same blocks today. The blocks came from the We Can Do It skill builder and were almost all made in 2011 or 2012. I made those blocks when I was still getting to know my sewing machine, totally new at sewing. The blocks moved home with me 5 times before they got put together. When I made them I was an undergraduate - now I have 3 degrees and a proper job. This quilt was started in a totally different chapter of my life to the one in which it will finish. Funny how quilts can span ages like that.

Resolutions after all

I don't blog much about anything, but I particularly don't blog much about my life, I think. I try to keep stuff craft focused. This is in part because of my job (I work with nosy kids who will ferret out any information they can about the adults in their lives, up to and including searching tirelessly for them on social media), and partly because I'm uncomfortably aware that my life is very much in the vein of barely-stopped-being-a-student. I mean, I have a 'proper, grown-up job' but I just six months ago got done being a full time university student, which I had been for six years. So in many ways I still feel like/live like a student.

Anyway, for much of the latter half of this year, I had no central heating in my house. This was fine in September when the weather was still pretty warm, but by the end of November was really cramping my style, and by the time it was fixed at the beginning of December was definitely necessary. This was due to an issue with the gas, so I also had no oven or stove cooking facilities at the time. The people around me were horrified that this was how my life was, but (student mindset!) I just got on with stuff.

Anyway, I realised that there are a couple of other things leading me to still live like a student and honestly, I'm done with it. Two things in particular: I have no light in my living room or bathroom.

The bathroom I'm pretty certain just needs a new lightbulb. Unfortunately the ceilings are pretty high for a house I'm pretty sure was built in the 20th century, and it's going to be a stepladder job, and I'm 5'2 first thing in the morning if I've slept particularly well. Also there'll be screwdrivers involved to take the light fitting apart. What I'm saying is that there are reasons that I haven't got around to sorting this yet, but it needs doing because showering in the dark is not the funnest thing ever and while I can pee with the door open (I live alone) it slightly prohibits having guests around outside of daylight hours.

The living room is not a lightbulb issue. It's had new lightbulbs and still doesn't work. I don't know what's wrong with it. I'll have to have a handyman round to sort it out, which means phoning my landlord and making a fuss. But in the interests of not living like a student any more, I should just do that. I don't have a good excuse for not having done that already (plenty of excuses, mind, just none that hold water). So that's the other resolution. Get the living room light sorted out.

Is there a word for that sort of thing? Where you sort of say, 'oh, the light doesn't work. Okay, I'll put a lamp in here/pee with the door open/absent mindedly sort things out so that it's still sub-optimal but not as bad as it could be'. Is it the missing stair that you get used to jumping over? You put a bit of carpet over it and tell the guests, 'by the way, that step's missing, so don't stand there.' It gets ridiculous, but you're used to jumping over that stair, so you fail to notice how silly it is. Just get the repairmen in. Fix the damn stair.

Plans and hopes

I'm not huge on New Year's Resolutions. Actually, the holidays we get around winter time aren't hugely important to me anyway. Christmas is a holiday I have a lot of ambivalence about, and last New Year's Eve, Mr Handmade and I fell asleep at around 10 o'clock and were awoken by my sister at about ten to midnight so we could come and see in the new year with my family.

This year, we're doing New Year's Eve very quietly, at home. We've had invitations from several directions, but I've come down with a terribly nasty cold in the last 24 hours, and we'll stay in, drink tea, maybe watch something on Netflix.

I do like how reflective everything gets at this time of year, though. I saw New Year's Resolutions described as 'a to-do list for the first week in January', but it's still nice that people think at this time of year about how to make their worlds better. It's nice, in some ways, to think about how things are compared to this time last year, and to think and wonder and hope about how things will be this time next year.

Compared to this time last year, I'm much happier. I'm in a stable job, not a student any more. I live in a nicer place, closer to family and slightly more convenient for visiting friends and family north of the border. Mr Handmade and I were talking about how 2014 has been a tough year for both of us, and it has - but it's ended stronger than it began. I have a really difficult job, but it's really rewarding. I have some really great, really inspirational coworkers.

Although I don't have resolutions, I have some goals for the coming year. I'd like to read more short stories - I only read one short story collection this year. I have Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood lined up to read, and I have my eye on one or two others, like Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer, which I've been meaning to acquire and read since we read the titular story in a creative writing class I took during my undergrad degree.

I'd like to finish the two fleece-backed quilts I'm working on at the moment. One of them has the top pieced and just needs basting, quilting and binding. The other has around half of the blocks made. They're a top crafting priority for me.

I'd like to make a traditional log cabin quilt. I have a mini-charm pack of midwinter red, from moda, which I plan to use as the hearts of the blocks. I want to use the traditional dark/light division and play with layouts.

I'd like to try a little free motion quilting. I'd like to knit a few more pairs of socks for myself. Mr Handmade needs new gloves and deserves another pair of socks. I'd like to finish my cardigan that's stalled halfway up the body. I'd like to make a few more skirts.

I think that's enough goals for the year ahead. What do you hope will happen in the next twelve months?

Fire the rockets!

Things have been moving slowly. Everything's winding down for... you know... the C word. But all systems are still running here. This particular spaceship (UFO... get it?) has been hanging around for years. I made these blocks when I was 21 or 22, in the second half of my first degree (I have 3). The blocks moved house with me at least five times, without being sewn together. I got them out earlier this year, ironed and starched them, then did nothing else with them.

A few months ago I bought the fleece for the back, expecting to have another row of squares; as you can clearly see in this picture, there's no space for another three blocks added onto that. Three blocks were culled from this quilt (they'll find good homes in other things) and eventually, today, I got around to sewing this top together. I have no real explanation for why it's taken so long for me to do anything with this one; that's just how things are sometimes, I suppose.

One of the reasons is probably that I haven't had a dedicated sewing space of my own before. Now I have the space for it, I've taken the decision to just make my living room into a sewing room. I live alone and keep one end of the table free for things like eating, but I can keep my sewing machine set up and my ironing board available at all times. It's so much easier when all you have to do is sit down and SEW - no messing around, putting things out and having to put them away again when finished.

Anyway, I'm ready to knock this spaceship out of the sky. It needs basting, quilting and binding, and then it can go to its new home on the back of my sofa or my rocking chair. I need to pop out tomorrow and get some curved safety pins (it's about time I stopped stealing my mum's and just bought my own).

It's funny - even the blocks I don't actually like on their own, I like in this mix. It's come together in a way I didn't dare to hope it would. And even if it was the ugliest quilt known to man, it would still be warm and cosy to snuggle under, and it would still contain my first ever quilt blocks. 

Random saturday

1. The worst part about finishing book 1 of a series in early December is that I don't dare buy book 2 in case someone's already got it for me. I'd hate to ruin someone's carefully planned gift idea. The book in question is The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. It's pretty standard anti-hero-ish slightly gritty epic fantasy - the main character's a special genius, but at least he doesn't have a special destiny. There's a mysterious woman who he desperately admires. He's the best in his field at whatever he chooses to do. It's pretty well written, though, and has some interesting adaptations of standard fantasy tropes. I'm planning to read the second book.

2. I've done very little knitting of late. I finished an adapted Tilting Tardis cowl in DK Blue-faced Leicester in Something Herbal from Old Maiden Aunt. I've made one Snapdragon Mitten but haven't yet cast on for the other one, in the same yarn.

3. I've pulled three quilt blocks out of my scrappy quilt and have used one so far for a cushion cover. It looks pretty good on my sofa for now, but it has a different home in mind in a few weeks' time.

4. I'm hopelessly behind on my reading goals for the year. I've read 37 books so far, but I'd rather be averaging somewhere around a book each week. I'm reading MaddAddam at the moment, though, which is wonderful and I'll probably finish this afternoon.

5. I've finally got central heating and cooking facilities back in my house. It feels so good to be able to take a hot shower again - living without heat is no way to be in the autumn/winter.

6. I'm taking full advantage of having cooking facilities back to cook a big batch of spaghetti bolognese this afternoon. It's a little sad how excited I am to cook real food in my own house again.

Unidentified Flying Objects

It's an inevitability of being a crafter, I think, that we end up with UFOs surrounding us. Of course I mean Un-Finished Objects. A project can take our fancy, fire us up big time, and then... fizzle. Or sometimes they get set aside so that we can do other things - other projects, other crafts, other work. Sometimes projects are tidied away so that space can be used in other ways. And sometimes we fall out of love with projects in a big way.

For me, it's mostly the time factor that gets in the way of me finishing projects. Well, that and the B word... boredom. Take this project, for example:

I began this project with yarn that a dear friend bought me for christmas... christmas in 2011. Yes, this granny square blanket has been on the go for almost three years. It's over half done, and has stalled and been picked up again many times. I'd love to finish it so I can snuggle under it!

Then there's the quilt that has all of the blocks made, mostly from Leila's skill builder sew-along. I was merrily working on that this summer, but then hit a snag with the length of the fleece. I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather do a shorter quilt than piece or change the back, so now I need to re-figure the layout, decide which blocks to take out, and sew it together. This one's annoying because it's mostly done, just needs probably a day of sewing to get it finished.

So I need to pick 3 blocks here to take out. I'm tempted to take out my 3 favourites and use them for something else - cushion covers, maybe?












Mr Handmade and I love to give each other hand made gifts. He's had several pairs of fingerless mitts and scarves and hats. He's had pyjama trousers and home made birthday cakes and stuff like that. He's never had a quilt from me. Except, his Christmas present from last christmas is a quilt - which is still not finished. (It's ok, I'm also waiting for him to finish my last christmas present, too). I have the fabric picked out and some of the blocks made, just need to get on with it. Hopefully by this christmas.

Then there are all of the knitting projects that are inhabiting my project bags. I should really go through them and do a major frog-or-finish. These are currently strewn across my house. I'd love to just get this stuff finished or reskeined and absorbed back into stash. Currently I'm doing nothing, and a huge part of that is because my job is really, really time consuming, and part of it is because I still need to buy a table for my craft room, but in part it's because there's so much going on that I should be doing that I just don't know where to start or what to do. I'd love to get everything cleared and organised so that I can just have a lovely clean slate to my crafting.

Literally the worst thing ever

You know what is literally the worst thing ever? Moving house.

Packing up all of your belongings, trying to cushion the breakables and wrap the spill-happy or spiky things adequately, filling your car or hiring a van or hiring someone to drive the van and driving for however long it takes to get from there to here and then the undignity of unloading, carrying, cursing, sweating, arranging and rearranging. Not knowing where anything is for the first however long, everything being in a permanent state of just grubby and disorganised and horrible. It's the worst.

You know what's worse than moving house?

Moving house four times within one year.

Yes, that's right. I moved at the end of last August, the middle of last September, the middle of June and the beginning of this August. Four moves, less than twelve months.

As a result, I've had the sewing machine and my stash packed up pretty thoroughly, and it's going to be a while before I can get my craft room set up to the point where I can just go and work on things. So, instead, I've been knitting.

I took a trip to London to visit my elder sibling and a dear friend, and the very best train knitting is, of course, socks. Why of course? Because they're small and portable, tend to have easily memorable pattern repeats, and, most important, nobody wants to sit beside someone with a handful of frightening looking spiky metal needles!

My big project at the moment is a cardigan, in dark purple. The yarn and pattern were bought for me by my godmother (I was named for her, so for my whole life she's been known as 'Big Lilly') and I really like it so far. Of course, I'm congenitally incapable of following a damn pattern as I'm told, so I've eliminated the side seams, patterned the back (it was plain, with lace fronts in the original), and charted out the lace repeat on squared paper. I know that written out instructions work for some people, but charting just makes so much more sense to me. The cardigan is a delicious deep aubergine-y colour.


I'm a bit further along than this picture, but not much. Doing the back and fronts at the same time means it seems to grow slowly, but it isn't really growing slowly. It's just a lovely thing, and I can't wait to finish it so I can wear it everywhere.

My big sewing project du jour is the scrappy quilt for the back of the sofa. Yes, still. I've got the backing for it, and chosen a layout for the blocks, and all that remains really is sewing the stuff together. But I've hit a snag, because my supposedly 60" wide backing fabric turns out to be closer to 57", and with a 60" top, I'm coming up short. I still need to decide what I'm doing with that. It's fleece, so I can't just piece something from the scraps of the top. I'll have to either get different fleece or add a stripe of some other fleece, or shorten the top. I need to get this done, though, so I can snuggle under it on the sofa. My new house is lovely, but a tad on the chilly side.

On Holiday

As I said in my last post, I'm on holiday at the moment. I spent a week visiting my lovely friend and her family, and now I'm in another city with Mr Handmade, relaxing and enjoying ourselves. There's a great little bakery about a block and a half from our hotel, so we've had some great breakfasts from there. We also took a pretty long uphill walk to a local grocer's and bought things like bread and lactose-free cheese and cereal bars so that we could lunch in the hotel room if we wanted to. This morning we breakfasted in the hotel room because there's an event on in the shopping centre nearby which is causing all sorts of clogged up shops and bakeries and stuff.

I've been enjoying a lot of frozen yoghurt and some great sushi and mexican food, both of which are a little scarce in my hometown. I've taken advantage of better prices over here to buy fabric for myself and I've bought some yarn. Pictures will come after the holiday is over.

Swistle's post about travelling with Elizabeth made me think about what I pack in hand luggage for long flights - it's about a 16 hour journey from my hometown to here, so there's plenty of long time spent in airports and on planes. I pack my handluggage with two aims in mind - first, that I can amuse myself easily on the flight, and second, that if my luggage doesn't arrive with me, I'll be okay for at least two or three days. For this trip, my handluggage contained:

*Two forms of photo ID (passport and driver's licence) with paperwork for travelling.
*Clean underwear (3 pairs) and 2 summer dresses, rolled up tightly to take up little space
*Pyjamas
*Toothbrush
*Shower gel, deodorant, shampoo and conditioner in small, travel sized bottles
*Hairbrush
*All medication needed for the duration of the holiday
*Empty bottle to be filled with water once through security
*Book of sudoku and pencil to fill them out (wasn't used on the flight over)
*2 books (Dust, by Hugh Howey, which I finished, and The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, which I read half of on the plane)
*Kindle, loaded with three new books (Americanah, The Snow Child, The Golden Notebook) and pre-switched to airplane mode
*Headphones (yes, airlines provide them, but my ears are unusually small and my own are more comfortable)
*Ipod, fully charged
*Mobile phone, fully charged and pre-switched to airplane mode
*Charger cables for all of the above electronic items

On one of the flights, I also took a simple knitting project with enough yarn to finish it. I worked on this during the wait at the airport, but not on the plane itself.

How does this differ from what you would tend to pack in your hand luggage?

Secret project revealed

The secret project! It was not one project, really, but three linked ones, gifts for my friend and her family because I'm visiting this week and they're putting up with me. Aren't they wonderful for letting me invade like this?








So I've made three little bags - about ten inches by six, just the right size for some big bars of British chocolate - one each for my dear friend, her mother and her sister. All fully lined, and all with little zipped pockets inside. I hope they'll be a useful size for keeping things in.







I love this detail in the lining of the blue bag - the fabric I used for lining has all sorts of British icons on it, like the tea caddy you can just see there, and afternoon tea. The blue bag was one that I wanted to be light and pretty, for my lovely pretty friend who loves blue. You saw the lining of the inside pocket of this bag last week.






This bag is for a purple-loving lady - no problems with that here! My love of purple is well documented... I wanted something modern and striking, so I did some flying geese for this one. The points have come out very well, I think! Much better than usual for me, anyway.

It's lined with this pretty print which I got from Mandors in Edinburgh, and the pocket is lined with this sweet floral. I have a headband in this fabric that I wear quite often.


Finally, I made subtle inquiries and was informed that one of the party had blue and yellow as her favourite colours. I'm not long on yellows in my stash, but I had this fun print with the bees and the daisies, and the blue with yellow flowers is one from my double bento-box quilt that I made a couple of years ago. I designed this bag to be based on a traditional dove-at-the-window block (one of many with that name), which works wonderfully in just two colours. Finally, I lined it in this rather charming fabric with tea pots and jam on it. The yellow pocket lining was pinched from my mum's stash.

So, there we go. Far more detail than you ever wanted to know about a little project, I'm sure!

Secret WIP is finished!

As I said yesterday, this project is secret. Its reveal won't be for about another week, yet, but it is finished! Threads trimmed, ironed, and stroked and admired plenty (yes I'm proud of my handiwork).

So, a sneak peek? How's this:

You want an inside look too? Well... alright then. Another teensy sneaky little peek. Here you go:





Now the only problem is, what do I work on next? Back to the WIP quilt for me, or do I do a lap quilt for Mr Handmade, which has 3 blocks done and the fabric sitting there in a bag waiting for me to finish? Or do I do another quick project of one sort or another...? No, better to go back to the WIPs. I'm going to finish those quilts this summer, you just see if I don't.

Works in Progress

Wow, things got incredibly busy here! My life has been incredibly hectic since September, really, though I was able to carve out a little time for me... since January, I've been unable to get even that, just working a lot and not being able to find any time to spend knitting, blogging, doing anything that is just indulgence, really.

But! I have a job where I get a chunk of time off in the summer, so I've been free and breezy the last week or so, and using it to indulge all my crafty needs.

I have this pile of quilt blocks that I made over 2 years ago - that's 3 houses ago!

There are 11 blocks there, and 3 more that I made at around the same time but didn't include in the photo. 14 blocks just sitting around, taking up space in my stash boxes, not the right number to make a good quilt or anything. They needed one more to be a 3x5 quilt, which is just a nice size for a lap quilt to throw over the back of a sofa, I think.

So I threw this one together from the book Jelly Roll Sampler Quilts, to make it up to 15 blocks. Now I have a lovely scrappy sampler quilt to put together. I've got the backing already, so it shouldn't take long to make up.

Of course, that's not the only WIP that's finally getting some love. I've got a secret project that will be revealed in a few weeks, but I can give this sneak peek of one step - that's 32 half-square triangles ready to turn into 16 wee squares.

It's odd, getting the urge to go back and finish a WIP after it's been hibernating for 2 years. What's the longest you've ever had a WIP before finishing it?

Only Connect

This morning, on the train, I made accidental eye contact with a stranger. He was a young man, probably a student, wearing a faded band tee shirt with a tartan flannel shirt over it. His eyes protruded and he had a long face with curly hair that stood tall on top of his head. He glanced at me at the same moment that I glanced at him and our eyes met. I smiled at him, and, after a moment of hesitation, he smiled back. A minute or so later, our eyes met again and we shared another smile. When he left the train, he smiled at me again. It was a rare but lovely moment of connection with a stranger. There were no demands, just a moment of shared humanity in the freezing train.

I asked a particularly flirtatious friend of mine, LadyV, does she flirt with everyone? She considered for a moment, then said, no, not everyone. A lot of people, though. It's not about sex, though, she said. It's about human connection. It's about forging links with people.

In about my third year of undergrad, I read a series of novels for classes about human connection. The one that sticks in my mind is Howards End. I think sometimes about Forster, about how his novels explore the barriers between people that lead us to miss each other. A Passage to India is about people connecting despite these barriers. He was not, I think, a happy man, but he was a great writer.

Waiting in the rain for the tram on Thursday, I moved to make room for a young woman to shelter at the tram stop. I caught her eye and smiled, glancing up at the sky to let her know why I had moved. She thanked me, asked my name, offered hers in return. She was from Albania, she told me, and asked had I heard of it. Mediterranean, I guessed, and she nodded. Good food, I told her, and she admitted that she's a terrible cook, though she enjoys needlework. She tried to guess my accent, declaring that I was Italian and then American before she gave up. I have no explanation for my higgledy-piggledy accent, but told her that I'm English, born to English parents. She said that she can't get used to the way that people here don't strike up conversations with people on the street the way they do in Albania. I asked what she does, and she told me she works for her church, showed me a badge declaring her a member of the LDS church. She asked what I do and I told her I teach literature. The tram arrived, and she smiled at me. 'God bless you,' I told her, and she said, 'the same to you.'

I'm recently returned from a visit to my partner, who lives in Scotland. We're lucky in that we have nightly phone calls and regular video chatting to sustain us, and we try to spend a weekend together each month. I can't imagine trying to keep up our connection through weekly letters and nothing else. We sometimes spend all evening skyping, carrying our laptops into our respective kitchens to cook together and eating together at our respective tables. It's almost like living together, except that the physical affection on which we both thrive is missing. When we're together in the flesh, we're almost always connected physically, holding hands or tucked in to each other's shoulders. Waiting at a red light, he briefly rests his hand over mine on the gear lever. These moments of connection are important.

The internet has made the world so much smaller. We can connect with people over vast distances and strike up friendships that are rendered no less real for the screen names and distance between us. These networks of friends make us more human, I think. I have friends on every continent except Antarctica. I think that's pretty cool. I have blog readers all over the world.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a lovely day. I hope you have some human connections in it. I hope the same sun shines on you as is shining on me just now.